


Introductions

by WolfeyedWitch



Series: Hunters and Halfas [2]
Category: Danny Phantom, Supernatural
Genre: Because this is Danny after all, Crowley is manipulative, Dean should organize Baby's trunk more often, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, I wanted to add Juliet the hellhound but I couldn't make it fit in this chapter, Sarcasm, Sheriff Mills in Mom Mode, Snark, but we all should know that already, canon? i don't know her, other tags to be added as I go, puns, she brings out the Mom Voice, so she and Crowley will probably show up at some unspecified time in the future
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2020-12-16 16:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21039365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfeyedWitch/pseuds/WolfeyedWitch
Summary: A series of interconnected one-shots where Danny meets the various characters of Supernatural.





	1. Castiel

**Author's Note:**

> So.... hi? I'm not dead, I didn't fall off the planet, and I wasn't eaten by rabid plot bunnies. Apparently procrastinating writers don't taste all that great. 
> 
> Anyway, here's the first chapter.

“Dean, I don’t care what you say. The answer’s still no,” Danny said.

The hunter in question had most of his torso in the trunk of his car, pulling out all the various weapons stored there. “Come on, kid. All I’m saying, it’s your blood. You should clean it.”

Danny pretended to think about it. “Hm. That’s true, it is my blood. And if it were the seats, I might actually feel sorry for you and clean it up. But as you stuffed me in your trunk with all your arsenal—do you seriously need that? What could you _possibly_ hunt that needs that—I don’t feel particularly inclined to help you with that.”

Dean let out a long, put-upon sigh. “Yeah, yeah, whatever, Casper. Worth a shot.”

Danny grinned at that. Now that the whole question of Danny’s huntability had been cleared up, he had gotten much more comfortable with Sam, Dean, and Bobby. He’d been staying there for two days now, and Dean had decided to start teaching Danny some practical life skills.

Of course to Dean, practical life skills included such things as lock picking and how to make your own flamethrower. But it also included cars. Anything and everything Danny could ever want to know about cars.

Which is why they were currently in the garage, working on Dean’s baby.

Dean pulled out another handful of—what even was that?—from the trunk. “That’s the last of it. We’re gonna have to reorganize everything when we put it back in,” he said mournfully.

“Did you organize it the first time around?” Danny asked skeptically.

“Hush you.” Dean checked his watch. “Okay, it’s officially time for you to get food. Grab me a beer while you’re in there.”

It was only mid-morning, not late enough for lunch yet, but the hunters had put Danny on a steady diet of small meals to help him regain the weight he’d lost during his five-day… adventure… at FentonWorks. The halfa went inside to find something worth eating. Luckily Bobby’s kitchen didn’t have any ecto-contamination bringing the food to life, so that was one worry off his mind.

Danny pushed down a wave of homesickness as he pulled out the makings of a sandwich. He couldn't go there, couldn’t think about that. It was too painful. He absently rubbed his hand across the still-healing incision on his chest.

Painful in more ways than one.

Suddenly a soft rustle interrupted his dark thoughts, and a voice came from behind him. “Hello, Daniel.”

  
Danny turned and screamed.

Dean ran inside when he heard the kid scream, pulling out a gun. Sam and Bobby had the same idea, and all three came into the kitchen ready to shoot whatever was attacking.

They were not expecting to find Danny crouched on the floor with a hand over his eyes, and Castiel standing over him.

“Cas, what the hell? Haven’t we talked about this? Personal space, man,” Dean said, lowering his gun.

“What’d you do to the kid?” Bobby asked.

Danny had stopped screaming but was still covering his eyes. _“This_ is Cas? What the hell, guys? Why were you freaking out over me when there are things like _him_ flying around?”

“My apologies, Daniel. I was unaware that your… abilities would react so strongly to my presence,” Cas said to the cowering teen.

“Ugh. Just… can you stop being so _bright?_ It _hurts._ I feel like I’m staring at the friggin sun.”

“Tell me you didn’t, Cas,” Sam said. He rushed over to Danny and pulled the teen’s hand off of his eyes.

Luckily he still _had_ eyes, even if they did look a bit worse for wear. Sam let out a sigh of relief, and Dean relaxed a touch as that horrible possibility was off the table. The last thing they needed was another Pamela Barnes.

“I will do my best to… turn down the brightness, so to speak,” Cas said.

“Yeah, thanks,” Danny huffed as Sam lent a hand and pulled him to his feet.

“What’re you doing here, Cas?” Dean asked.

“You called me,” the angel said implacably.

“Yeah, three days ago,” Sam muttered.

“I required that time to complete an investigation,” Cas said, not letting Sam’s comment ruffle his feathers. “I had to contact one of my allies to search through Heaven’s archive for me. It was a slower process than either of us would have liked.”

“Wait, heaven? That’s a thing?” Danny said, looking back and forth between hunters and angel.

“Tell you later,” Bobby muttered.

“And my suspicions were correct,” Cas continued, a hint of annoyance creeping into his voice. “You managed to find a very powerful creature from a dimension that doesn’t exactly have the best of relations with Heaven or Earth.”

Danny managed not to turn invisible under the gaze of the hunters by sheer force of will. “Um… okay? How did you know my name though?”

“Heaven keeps track of all souls and their final destinations,” Cas explained. “It is a rare occurrence for a name to simply disappear off our lists entirely. You were bound for Heaven before your accident; after, you are now bound for neither heaven nor hell.”

Danny gaped. “I was… supposed to go to heaven?” His voice grew suspiciously wet.

“Count yourself lucky; you dodged a bullet there,” Dean said grimly.

Cas’s expression somehow managed to convey that he agreed with Dean’s words, but disliked that Dean had spoken them. It was a rather impressive feat given how little his face moved.

“You must be careful, Danny. Do not attract Heaven’s attention. You are a powerful entity that some of my brothers and sisters would not hesitate to use in our war,” the angel said.

“There’s a war. In Heaven.” Danny said slowly.

“Angels aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, what else is new,” Dean said.

“Heaven is fighting a civil war over whether or not to restart the apocalypse,” Sam explained. Not that the explanation actually helped; it really just made more questions.

“Cas, can you mark him? Like you did the boys?” Bobby tipped his head towards Sam and Dean.

Cas nodded, then reached a hand towards Danny.

“Woah, woah, woah,” Danny said, shying away. “Nope, not happening. Not without some explanation.”

“Enochian sigils, to hide you from angels,” Cas said.

“Right. And you touching me gives me this invisibility cloak how?” Danny said, still eyeing Cas’s hand like it might bite him.

“He’s going to carve the sigils into your ribs,” Dean said.

Danny’s eyes bulged. “Oh hell no!”

Sam winced. “I know. It sounds bad. But it’ll help keep you safe. Trust us when we say you do _not _want angry angels after you.”

Danny stopped fidgeting and squared his shoulders. “Um… okay then?”

Cas touched the kid on the chest. Danny winced, then stilled.

“If you were fully human I could fully heal your wounds,” Cas said. “I did what I could for you.”

Danny rubbed a hand over his chest. “Thanks?”

Cas nodded to him, then the hunters. He added, “Remember. Do not draw Heaven’s attention.”

Then he disappeared with a sound of fluttering wings.

Danny looked at the space where the angel had been, then over to the hunters. “Okay. Can someone please explain to me, what just happened?”


	2. Crowley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Shows up to the party 10 months late, covered in plot bunny bites, with a home-brewed hot chocolate because the local Starbucks closed from the plague*
> 
> Sup.
> 
> Sorry this is so late, y'all! I have had the basic gist of what I wanted this piece to be running around my head for months, but I swear it fought back when I actually went to write it. This plot bunny had sharp teeth, and I didn't have a holy hand grenade, so our battle was long and bloody.

“So you just sight down the barrel, and squeeze the trigger,” Sam explained. He fired off three shots to demonstrate, hitting three of the beer bottles he’d set up along the fence for targets. 

He put the safety back on before handing the gun to Danny, who was fidgeting next to him. The kid took it without looking at it and held it like it might bite him.

“Just remember what we talked about, right? It’s just a tool, and one that you should know how to use,” Sam said. 

After watching Danny flinch away from their guns for the past few days, Sam had decided to follow Dean’s example and teach the kid some life skills as well. In his case, weapons training. He had started the day before with how to disassemble and reassemble various types of weapons, from pistol to shotgun, and how to safely handle them. 

He tried not to think of the last kid he had taught this to, and where he was now. Dean had been right; Adam had deserved to stay out of the life, to be normal.

Sam internally shook his head. This was different. Danny was already in the life, and he needed to know how to handle himself. That included being familiar with firearms. 

“I just… I don’t like guns,” Danny said. “Anyway, I don’t need them.” He aimed a finger-gun at the remaining bottles, and shot small green rays at them. Each one hit its target dead on. 

He passed the gun back to Sam with a small grin. “See? I don’t need a gun.”

Sam raised his eyebrows at the display. “I still think you should know how to handle them in case there’s a time or place where you can’t use your powers,” he said. “But I will admit, that’s pretty impressive.”

He thought back to the night they had met the kid, and how he had missed his shot at the hunters then. “If your aim’s so good though, why did you miss us that first night?”

Danny looked at him with a very teenage expression, one that clearly read as ‘Are you serious right now?’

“I didn’t miss,” he said. “I hit exactly where I was aiming.” He stared at Sam, waiting for the hunter to understand his meaning.

And didn’t that just make Sam feel worse about the whole situation. He and Dean had happened to meet a traumatized, injured kid whose first instinct was still to help, even in a situation he knew nothing about. And instead of learning what was going on, they defaulted to shooting at him. On top of that, instead of shooting back at them—which would have been entirely understandable—he had chosen to fire warning shots at the ground before leaving.

And what had they done? Shot him full of rock salt, knocked him out with a crowbar, and tied him up in Bobby’s basement. With salted ropes that burned the kid, no less. 

Sometimes Sam wondered whether they were really the good guys in this whole mess.

Danny was still staring at him, blue eyes wide. The kid deserved so much better than this, deserved everything life could offer him.

Currently though, life had decided to suckerpunch him and then kick him while he was down. It was the least Sam could do to help make sure the kid could get back up again.

Sam smiled. “You’re a good kid, Danny. Don’t ever change.”

Danny smiled back, though it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Well. Isn’t this a heartwarming scene,” came a familiar accented voice.

  
  


Danny eyed the newcomer warily. He wasn’t exactly like Castiel, thank the Ancients, but he was far from a standard human too. Cas had been all eyes and flame and wings barely contained in a human vessel, something so far from being human as to be incomprehensible to the human mind. This guy? He seemed more like someone being overshadowed.

Eh, not quite. It was definitely an order of magnitude beyond normal-overshadowing-bad, but definitely not to holy-shit-that’s-an-ANGEL?!-bad. He was shadows hanging heavy off of every inch of him, eyes burning a deep red that Danny had only ever seen in ghosts before.

Sam knew him. And unlike with Castiel, who despite his eldritch horror aura of I-need-to-run-right-now the hunters had treated like an old friend, they weren’t on good terms. From the corner of his eye Danny could see Sam reach for something in his jacket with one hand while the other went for his phone. Texting one-handed; neat trick.

“Moose, is that any way to treat an old friend?” the not-actually-a-man asked. “And in front of the newest member of your merry band of misfits, at that.”

“And you should leave,” Sam said curtly. “You aren’t welcome here Crowley.”

_ Moose?  _ Well, it was kind of fitting.

“You wound me,” Crowley said, looking completely unaffected.

“Not yet I haven’t,” Sam muttered. From Crowley’s grin, whatever he was had good enough hearing to catch the comment.

From behind him, Danny could hear footsteps. Ah, calling for backup, that’s what Sam had been doing. Good idea.

“Last time I saw you around here uninvited, I’m pretty sure I—” Bobby’s growl was cut off.

“Threatened to, oh what was it? Yes. ‘Shoot me so full of rock salt I crap margaritas’,” Crowley said, pitching his voice to an absurd mimicry of Bobby’s accent for the last sentence.

Oof. That sounded like no fun at all. Danny looked between the hunters and Crowley, trying to get a read on the situation.

“Anyway I’m not here to talk to you, Bobby. Or to Moose and Squirrel. I wanted to talk to Danny.”

Yeah, that couldn’t be good. Danny edged his feet into a defensive stance, ready to go ghost or use his powers at a moment’s notice.

“How do you know Danny?” Dean growled.

“I always keep an eye on potential assets,” Crowley said airily, as if every conceivable weapon the hunters could carry wasn’t currently trained on him. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Danny said truthfully.

“Of course you do,” Crowley said, smiling with far too many teeth. “After all, kings and princes should be friends, yes?”

Well, that changed the landscape a bit. Whoever,  _ whatever,  _ this guy was, he  _ definitely  _ should not know about that.

Danny himself hadn’t known about the consequences of his fight with Pariah Dark until after the whole Dan fiasco. Clockwork had taken him to his lair and laid it out for him: the Ghost Zone always had a king. Always. Since ghosts didn’t exactly have a bloodline like the living, the crown wasn’t passed from parent to child. 

No, it was passed as the spoils of battle.

Meaning, since Danny beat Pariah Dark in single combat, he was now the heir to the throne. The only reason he hadn’t been crowned already is that the ghosts wouldn’t accept a halfa as king. But once Danny full-died, there was a throne waiting for him in the Ghost Zone.

But how did  _ this  _ asshole know that? It was far from common knowledge, even in the Zone. So for someone obviously not from there to know about it, something was definitely up.

“King of  _ what,  _ exactly?” Danny said, getting just the slightest bit aggravated. Just a little. “And how do  _ you  _ know about it?”

“I have my sources,” the whatever-he-was said airily, examining his nails like they were discussing what type of tea they wanted during their afternoon snack. “It truly is a shame about the lovely Desiree. She was supposed to be one of mine. Personally, I think she would have done much better making deals than granting wishes.”

And didn’t that just ratchet Danny’s aggravation levels up just the slightest bit more. “One. Of. Your.  _ What.  _ You talk like I know all about this, but you still haven’t actually told me anything.”

Okay, maybe the aggravation levels were a bit higher than “slight”. He could feel the scary-eyes make an appearance. 

“Crossroads demons,” Dean said. “Crowley was a crossroads demon. They make deals. Ten years of life with whatever you bargained for, then your soul gets dragged down to hell for the rest of eternity. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. Not the best net gain if you consider the long term.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, who would be so stupid as to make a deal like that?” he muttered, looking pointedly at the other two hunters.

Danny blinked a couple times, trying to let that massive info dump sink in. 

Okay, half-ghost class, what have we learned today?

  1. Demons are real. Freak out about that later.
  2. They make deals. Judging by the conversation, they had worse outcomes than wishes did in Amity.
  3. Dean and/or Bobby quite possibly make a dumb deal at some point. Look into how long ago that was; it wouldn’t do to make friends with some halfa-friendly hunters only for them to up and die on him without even the chance of going to the Zone.
  4. Crowley was—

Record scratch. 

Wait. Crowley ‘was’ a crossroads demon?

“No need to be snippy, Moose,” the demon in question said.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Danny cut in. “Back up a sec. Dean said you ‘were’ a crossroads demon. So what are you now?”

Crowley’s answering smile reminded him uncomfortably of Vlad at his most obnoxious. “Very good, Danny. I knew those C’s were just because of poor time management, not intrinsic lack of talent.”

“Are you trying to get the kid to like you, or are you trying to add another entry to the list of people who want to shoot you on sight?” Bobby asked sarcastically.

Thank you, crotchety old hunter, for the timely and appropriate comment.

“Well, I always was good at multitasking, dear,” Crowley smirked. “And anyway, Danny. To answer your question: I’m the king of Hell.”

Danny nodded slowly. “Uh huh… Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s say I come within the same zipcode as believing you. Then, pun and offense fully intended, why the  _ hell  _ would I help you?”

“Kid’s moral compass points truer than any of ours,” Dean said. Which was somewhere between endearing, embarrassing, and mildly concerning. Danny hoped the hunter was just being self-deprecating. 

“That’s not exactly difficult, Squirrel.” 

Danny had to stifle a laugh at that nickname, and simultaneously added that whole moral compass issue to his growing list of things to worry about later. He could multitask too.

“And I could be such a good partner, Danny,” the demonic royal said, turning to the halfa in question. “Think about it: the king of Hell, and the king of the Zone. Together, we would be unstoppable!”

“No thanks,” Danny said casually. “I’m going to take a hard pass on that offer. I have no intentions towards world domination, thanks very little.”

Crowley again reminded Danny far too much of Vlad, this time like when the elder halfa knew something the younger didn’t. “We both know that isn’t true, but if that’s what you care to think, who am I to argue? Just take my card so you can get in touch when you change your mind.” 

He reached into the breast pocket of his suit, pulling out a business card. This was far too easy; he had to have another trick up his fancy sleeve.

“After all,” Crowley said, extending the card towards Danny, “it is inevitable.”

No.

_ No. _

That single word hit Danny like the fateful jolt of electricity from his parents’ portal, making every limb stiffen. He felt the color drain from his face as memories of a paradox that never truly occurred flashed through his mind.

_ I’m still here. I’m inevitable! _

But  _ no.  _ That wasn’t going to happen. It  _ couldn’t.  _ He had promised! Clockwork wouldn’t—

_ Wouldn’t what?  _ A nastily familiar voice chimed in his mental conversation.  _ Wouldn’t leave you in our parents’ basement for a week to be cut apart slowly? _

Danny imagined a mental thermos to capture the owner of that mental voice, then put it up on a very high mental shelf marked “DO NOT MENTALLY TOUCH.” 

Clockwork had his reasons. He always did. 

Clockwork wouldn’t let him become Dan.

Luckily, two years of hunting ghosts and avoiding ghost hunters had taught Danny how to resolve his moments of crisis quickly, and his internal freak-out was barely long enough to raise any suspicion. He zoned back into the conversation as Dean growled something at Crowley and pulled out a jagged knife with a bone hilt. Did it say something about his half-life that he could tell it was bone even from this distance? Sam and Bobby each had guns drawn, though not quite pointed at the… demon… (he still wasn’t used to that) king.

“Well now really, there’s no need for this unpleasantness,” Crowley said in a voice so mild and calm that it raised Danny’s hackles. “I was merely—”

“Get out,” Danny interrupted.

“What was that?” Crowley said, actually raising a hand to cup his ear when he and Danny both knew full well that nothing had been misheard.

Danny clenched his jaw, and threw an ecto-blast at the demon’s feet. If he aimed a little closer to the demonic asshole than he had with the hunter brothers, well, no one here would exactly blame him for that. And it sure felt good to see his stupidly clean suit pick up dirt and singe marks.

“Consider that your one warning,” Danny said, letting another blast light his hands as he held it ready. “To humans, those feel like getting bit by a swarm of fire ants. To ghosts, it’s more like getting hit by a flaming sledgehammer. Now I understand you like to make deals. So how about this: you leave. Right now. And then we don’t have to learn what a blast like that feels like for demons.”

“Well. I suppose when you put it that way,” Crowley said, looking far too calm for someone who had just been threatened. With a snap of his fingers, he disappeared, leaving only a small white rectangle on the ground where he had been standing.

Danny stalked over to pick it up. It was the damn asshole’s business card, the same one he had been trying to hand over. 

_ Crowley, King of Hell.  _

_ 666-666-6669 _

_ Call when you change your mind, Dan. _

That absolute demonic  _ bastard.  _ Danny set the card alight with a blaze of ghostly green fire before the others could read the not-so-subtle reminder of what he could become.

“Try not to let him get to you,” Dean said. “He’s a world-class asshole with centuries of practice manipulating people.”

Sounded like a certain fruitloop he knew, though Vlad had decades rather than centuries of practice. Still. The best manipulations were based on at least a partial truth… 

“We’re done for today,” Sam said softly, looking at Danny with kind eyes. “Why don’t you head back inside; we’ll clean up out here.”

“C’mon, kid,” Bobby added. “You can help me organize my lore library. Maybe even help translate some of it for those who don’t speak dead languages.”

Danny nodded, though his mind was still focused on whether the future truly could be changed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley actually has an agenda here beyond "be a dick to Danny", but since this is Danny's point of view, I'm not sure if that got across or not. Given Crowley's scheming nature, he has like, 3 layers of thought behind everything he's doing at any given time I think. 
> 
> As always, let me know what you think! I have plans for who is next to be introduced, but feel free to throw out character suggestions. Anyone in particular you think Danny should meet?
> 
> There's fanart for this chapter now too! [This](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476124) is the standard human view of Crowley, and [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25476244) is Danny's view of our favorite snarky demon king.


	3. Sheriff Jody Mills

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shows up holding a soft fluffy rabbit and petting it behind the ears*
> 
> What's this? Wolf's posting something? And it hasn't even been a month?! 
> 
> Yes! Yes, I am posting more! No, it isn't a sign of the apocalypse (although I'm sure the characters in this could handle a little apocalypse anyway). Anyway, here's Sheriff Mills juggling her Mom mode and her Sheriff mode. Enjoy!
> 
> Update: thank you to HobiIsTheSunFiteMe for correcting my Latin spelling, I knew the phrase but accidentally used more Spanish type spelling. So, now it's correct, thanks!

A few years back, if someone had told Sheriff Jody Mills that she would go to Bobby Singer for advice on a case, she would have had trouble keeping a straight face long enough to arrest the person for public intoxication. Then she would have gone home and laughed until she couldn’t breathe. Because really? Her, going to Bobby Singer, the town drunk, for help on a case? Don’t be ridiculous.

And yet, here she was, standing on the porch of his house, ringing the doorbell and hoping he was around. It was strange how a little case of zombies could change your views on what was and wasn’t insane.

The door swung open to reveal Bobby in all his portly, graying, hat-wearing glory. “Sheriff Mills, how can I help you?”

“Call me Jody. Figure we’re at that point. Can I come in?”

He beckoned for her to come in. She sat down at a table in what she supposed was a study, or what passed for it with the surly hunter. The table was covered in papers and books in a variety of languages. Along the wall was an impressive display of antiquated phones, each labeled with a different name and position. FBI, Homeland Security, various police departments… 

“Beer?” he offered.

She hesitated. She really shouldn’t, considering this was work related, but… “Sure. We’re gonna need it, this one’s nasty.”

He pulled two out of the fridge, popped the tops, and handed one to her. “Cheers.”

Jody grabbed the offered bottle and took a long swig, grimacing. “I’m pretty sure I see at least three felonies within this one room. How is this my life?”

Bobby shrugged. “We all got here somehow.”

Just then a clatter came from behind them. It sounded a lot like…

“So Bobby, I get the whole school thing and I know you said I have to take a language but I really don’t see why I can’t just take Latin, I mean come on, like every high school in the country that is even halfway to stuck-up offers Latin, and you’re saying I can’t take it?”

It sounded a lot like the thundering steps of a teenage boy coming down the stairs. Which, apparently, it was.

Jody turned to see a dark haired teen wearing jeans and a NASA t-shirt coming down the stairs without seeming to so much as stop and take a breath during his long diatribe. 

“Because you already know Latin, so there’s no point in you taking it,” Bobby shot back, seemingly unsurprised by this turn of events. 

“Well yeah, because _ lingua Latina mortua est, _but I don’t see how that—” 

He stopped in mid-sentence and mid-step, foot poised over a stair. “Uh. I didn’t realize you were having company?”

Bobby nodded to the teen. “Wasn’t expecting it, she just stopped by for help. On a case,” he emphasized. 

She waved. “Hi, I’m Sheriff Jody Mills.”

“Oh. Yeah, okay,” the kid said back, still poised precariously on the stairs. “I guess I’m just gonna… go… be somewhere… “

He trailed off, getting almost inaudibly quiet, but Jody could swear he said, “not here.”

In the split second between when she turned to give Bobby a quizzical look, and when she turned back to look at the teen, he had somehow made it back upstairs. And without any of the noise that had accompanied his trip down.

Meanwhile, Bobby was muttering something about reckless kids being terrible at keeping secrets.

Jody slowly turned back to face Bobby, and deliberately took a long swallow of beer before talking. “You may not know this, but part of my job as sheriff is to keep track of cases that may cross into my jurisdiction. And I keep a particular eye on missing children cases.”

Bobby nodded. “I kinda figured.”

“So, in light of that knowledge, would you like to tell me who that is? Because he looks an awful lot like a missing child poster that came through my fax machine.”

Bobby sighed and adjusted his hat. “Well, that’s ‘cause he is.”

Jody glared. “Bobby. It’s one thing to look the other way with you helping out hunters, but this? That’s a missing kid! Daniel James Fenton, age sixteen, missing for two weeks from Amity Park, Minnesota, last seen wearing jeans and a NASA t-shirt. I can’t— I _ won’t— _help cover up a kidnapping!”

“You’re not,” Bobby sighed. “Just— he’s here of his own free will, okay? He needed a place to crash. Home wasn’t safe for him.”

Jody rubbed her temples. “Please. Just, tell me what’s going on here, because I want to help, I really do, but I can’t do that if I don’t know what’s happening.”

Bobby took a long drink from his own beer. “It ain’t really my story to tell, but I guess I’m gonna tell it anyway. God knows he won’t.”

Another swig of beer. “How much do you know about his parents? His town?”

Jody shook her head. “Not much, just that the Fentons are inventors and scientists. Why?”

“Well, because it’s a little more complicated than that,” Bobby said. “They’re scientists and inventors, sure, but they’re also hunters. That town has a real problem for… well, they call them ghosts, but they ain’t anything like the ghosts we usually see. And they’re crap hunters too, not that I’d say that to the kid. Way too focused on the wrong thing.”

He moved to grab something off a bookshelf. “See, the only reason that town wasn’t completely overrun with whatever those things are is that another one of the “ghosts” took it on himself to protect the town. Told the media his name was Danny Phantom.”

Bobby laid down two sheets of paper. One was the same missing persons poster she had in her office, with the name Daniel Fenton. The other was a bounty sheet for a creature originally called “Inviso-bill” on the paper, but that had been crossed out and the name “Danny Phantom” was written at the bottom.

The quality was terrible on the Phantom photo, but it was enough so she could see the resemblance. “So, what, the kid’s got a ghostly double or something? And he left to get away from it?”

Bobby shook his head. “Good theory, but no. Turns out that Danny is something more along the lines of a semi-ghostly shapeshifter. Those are both him.”

Jody stared at the photos in confusion, then back at Bobby, brows furrowed. “How is that even…”

Bobby shrugged. “Kid explained it, but honestly it makes no sense to me. By all rights he should be dead, but instead of kicking around as a ghost, he can swap back and forth between being an Amity-type ghost—” he pointed at the photo of Phantom— “and looking human.” He pointed at the photo of Fenton.

Jody blinked a couple times, willing the information to sink in. She then held the cold beer bottle to her forehead to hopefully stave off the migraine she could feel setting in. “That still doesn’t explain why he’s here.”

“Well, know how I said the Fentons were too obsessed with hunting the wrong thing?” He paused. Apparently the question hadn’t been rhetorical. She nodded, still holding the beer bottle against her head. “Phantom was their number one target.”

Well. That was just…

“Fuck.”

Bobby snorted a short, humorless laugh. “That’s about what we said.”

“So he left to get away from them? And found you guys because you’re the experts?”

Bobby shook his head. “He left, but not soon enough. And it was less a matter of ‘find’, and more a matter of him accidentally crashing one of the boys’ hunts.”

Jody looked towards the upper level of the house, where the teenage part-ghost had disappeared. “Tell me they didn’t do anything stupid.”

“Define stupid.”

Jody groaned.

“It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as it coulda been. They knocked him out and brought him here to use my panic room to hold him until they could figure out what he was and how to deal with it.”

Jody got the nearly overwhelming urge to hit her head against the table in frustration, but held off on account of how that would only exacerbate her headache more than this conversation already was. “Next time you see the boys, could you please smack them both for me?”

That got a true chuckle out of Bobby. “Yeah, pretty much. But the real damage wasn’t from the Winchesters, though that didn’t help. Danny had already been hurt. Turns out his parents caught his ghost side and things only went downhill from there. Danny ended up here because he was running away.”

Jody had a short but intense mental debate about how to possibly arrest and prosecute parents for child abuse if they didn’t actually know it was their child they were abusing. Unfortunately, she came up with no satisfactory answer. “Well. That makes this difficult.”

“Just about.”

She thought about how best to salvage the flaming wreckage of this car crash of a situation. “Let Danny know that I’m available if he ever wants to talk. About anything. And that I’m not gonna do anything that might get him put into a bad situation, despite the whole ‘sheriff’ thing. And _ you _ let _ me _know if there’s anything I can do to help you out from my end of things.”

Bobby nodded. “Sure thing.” 

They both sat drinking their beer for a long minute. Then Bobby asked, “So about that case of yours?”

  
  


An hour and multiple beers later, they had gone over the possible list of monsters that could be behind her current case, as well as a few of the more common ones in the area just so she could be prepared. They might have kept at it, except for the familiar growl of a car engine pulling up to the house.

“Hey Bobby, we got the groceries and the ammo,” Dean called as he came through the door, loaded with a mismatched set of shopping bags. Sam was close on his heels.

Bobby gave her a pointed look and then hid a smile behind his most recent beer.

Jody waited for the Winchester boys to put their various bags down before she drew herself up to her full height (she wasn’t a small woman by any stretch of the imagination, but those two made her feel like she was barely 4 feet tall) and smacked both of them on the back of the head.

Twin exclamations of surprise sounded from the boys, followed by looks of various amounts of confusion (aimed at her) and betrayal (aimed at Bobby).

“Samuel and Dean Winchester, I am absolutely appalled at your behavior,” she said in her best Mom Voice. “How dare you come into a situation and make snap judgments that endanger the life of a child!”

They had the grace to look ashamed at that, as well they should. Dean sheepishly asked, “So I guess this means you met Danny?”

He shrank back under the weight of her glare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments feed the author! I love all your ideas and guesses about who else is going to show up. Keep them coming!

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully (knock on wood) I will post more, this time significantly sooner than the last interval between posts. In the meantime, please let me know what you thought. Comments, kudos, constructive criticism, capslock vents, and pterodactyl shrieking are all welcome.
> 
> Also! There's now fanart for this work! [This](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22164148) is what Sam, Dean, and Bobby are seeing when they look at Cas. And [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22164211) is what Danny is seeing.


End file.
